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Israel was not created by European Jews. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel and in the Middle East for more than 3,000 years.
Evidence of a Jewish presence in Israel dates back 3,400 years, to the formation of the religion. The name "Jew" derives from their origin in the mountains of Judea. This region was first named in the Book of Joshua and has been consistently used to describe the territory from Jerusalem south along the Judean mountain ridge line, extending east from the mountains down to the Dead Sea.
Judea has been known by this name for unbroken centuries, and were registered as such on official documents and maps, by international institutions and in authoritative reference books right up to about 1950. When the correct names became a problem for Palestinian Arabs trying to make their newly-minted claim on the land, it somehow became "politically correct" to use "West Bank" or "occupied territories"
instead of the historically accurate name Judea.
Over the course of this long history, the Jews have several times been dispersed and then returned from exile, buttressed by the power and influence of their holy book, The Tanakh (the Old Testament).
The yearning to return to Eretz Yisrael (the land of Israel) became a universal Jewish theme after the Jewish-Roman wars, which saw the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus in the year 70 CE and the subsequent exile of the Jews. A second Jewish revolt in 135 led to the renaming of Jerusalem to Aelia Capitolina and Judah became known as Palestine until the Crusades.
While their numbers were smaller, there has never been a time over the last three millennia when there were no Jews in Eretz Yisrael.
Between the 13th and 19th centuries, the number of those who made the aliyah (liter-ally "ascent", Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel) rose mainly due to the resurgence of messianic fervor among the Jews of Spain, France, Italy, the Germanic states, Russia and North Africa.
During this period, Jewish immigration was also spurred by a general decline in the status of Jews across Europe and an increase in religious persecution. The expulsion of Jews from England (1290) France (1391), Austria (1421) and Spain (the Alhambra decree 1492) were seen by many as a sign of approaching redemption and contributed to the messianic spirit of the time.
By the mid-19th century, the Land of Israel was a part of the Ottoman Empire and a province of Syria, populated mostly by Muslim and Christian Arabs, as well as Jews, Greeks, Druze, Bedouins and other minorities. By 1844, Jews constituted the largest population group (and by 1890 an absolute majority) in a few cities, most notably Jerusalem.
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